round and round we go

This is a fun blast from the past -

An article that describes Republican congressional efforts to pass law that would make (then) President Bush's warrentless evesdropping of US citizens (which the White House was already allowing the NSA to do) Legal. Now here we are 7 years later and it's the Republicans who suddenly hate that sort of Presidential power and some of the Dems who support it.

Round and round and round we go.
It's funny, given how this country tends to go for Presidential political parties in two term increments, you'd think the Republicans might do some forward thinking and actually support giving all kinds of spying powers to the president ... knowing that statistics are on their party's side for being the next guys who would get to use that power and that it is easier to get the power now while they aren't in charge.

Oh well. Here's a flash back to share with all who think that NSA's "warrentless wiretapping" was invented by the current administration.

GOP Senators Near Deal on Eavesdropping

By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer
3-8-06

After weeks of negotiations and closed door meetings, moderate Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee will propose legislation giving President Bush's controversial surveillance program the force of law.

Support was building Tuesday among Republicans and the White House for the proposal to craft eavesdropping legislation and conduct additional oversight more than four years after Bush secretly initiated the program. The move also blunted Democratic calls for an investigation of the U.S.-based monitoring operations in the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the legislation proposed by several moderate Republicans was "certainly a good foundation to start with" — a sentiment shared by the Senate's Republican leadership and the White House, he said.

Sen. Mike DeWine (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, said he would soon introduce the Terrorist Surveillance Act of 2006 with three other moderates who have helped shaped the debate on intelligence issues: Sens. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

Roberts said he believed that Bush would sign surveillance legislation after "Congress worked its will." But he said there may still be changes ahead on the proposal now under consideration. "I don't see every 't' crossed and 'i' dotted," Roberts said.

It's also unclear if the House will consider a similar measure. House Intelligence Chairman Peter Hoekstra, R-Mich., has not yet taken up legislation.

Meanwhile, Democrats on the Intelligence Committee expressed outrage after a meeting Tuesday that senators voted — along party lines — to reject an investigation of the surveillance proposed by West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the committee's top Democrat.

"The committee — to put it bluntly — basically is in the control of the White House," a visibly angry Rockefeller said.

Roberts balked at Rockefeller's suggestion. Roberts told reporters that he asked the committee to reject confrontation and accommodate an agreement with the White House to create a subcommittee of seven senators with broad oversight of the National Security Agency's terrorist monitoring.

"We should fight the enemy. We should not fight each other," Roberts said.

The 15-member panel agreed, over strong Democratic objections that the limited size of the group means Congress will be writing laws in the dark. "Our committee has to be fully informed if we are to guide the legislative debate on this program that is fast approaching," Rockefeller said.

The growing call for legislation has added pressure on the Bush administration to go along, and the White House indicated a broad approval for DeWine's bill.

"We think it is a generally sound measure," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. "We have said we are committed to working with Congress on legislation that would further codify into law the president's authority to detect and prevent potential attacks."

Yet even as legislation is drafted, lawmakers are pressing for more details about the surveillance.

Rockefeller said he spent all of Friday at the NSA, seeking answers to more than 400 questions. He said it would take several visits to have a full understanding of the program, which allowed the administration to eavesdrop on international calls and e-mails of U.S. residents when terrorism is suspected.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., also threatened to write legislation to limit funding for the program if he can't get more information about it. "If we cannot find some political solution to the disagreement with the executive branch, our ultimate power is the power of the purse," Specter said.

Rivaling the DeWine approach, Specter is writing a separate bill that would allow the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court the authority to give the program a broad constitutional blessing every 45 days. Specter's support remains unclear.

DeWine's bill would — for a time — exempt the president's surveillance program from a 1978 law aimed at governing electronic intelligence collection inside the United States.

The proposal, now being circulated on Capitol Hill, would allow the government to monitor suspected terrorists for up to 45 days without first seeking approval from the federal intelligence court. The government would then have three options: stop the surveillance, seek a warrant from the court, or come to Congress to explain why a warrant isn't possible.

DeWine said his approach would create a subcommittee to consider those requests and conduct in-depth oversight of the monitoring on a case-by-case basis.

Like the president's program, his bill covers only communications where one party is overseas and one is inside the United States.

The White House has said that Bush acted lawfully when he ordered the warrantless surveillance because he had the inherent authority as president and under a September 2001 resolution to use force in the war on terror. Although initially reluctant to work with Congress on a bill, the White House has come around in recent weeks as lawmakers threatened investigations.

Roberts and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., both indicated their support for the concept drafted by the moderate senators. But in a sign of how carefully lawmakers must handle the debate, Frist sought to make clear the president's actions are legal now, noting that he believes Bush already "has the constitutional authority to conduct this program."

Brewing Tips!!

Some quick tips.

The first is to brew on your back porch or in the garage or someplace that you can hose down afterwards. You cannot believe how quickly your wort can boil over and given that most of it is a sugar based liquid, it creates a nasty sticky mess.  A camp stove can be good for this. My brewing buddy and I use the propane burner off of an old gas grill. As an added benefit ... it is more fun to sit around a boiling pot sipping at an ale and occasionally stirring than it is to stand in front of a stove.

Next tip is actually several tips but they are based around water volumes.
When your wort is all in the fermentation bucket you should have about 5 gallons of liquid ... but you don't start out with 5 gallons. For one thing, your brew pot will only hold so much. The other factor is that it takes (roughly speaking) FOREVER to bring that much water to a boil!

So ... maybe 2 gallons of liquid to start with. Once it has been brought to a boil and you add your Malt Extract (NOTE: FOR SOME REASON BOIL OVER MOST OFTEN OCCURS WHEN YOU ADD STUFF TO YOUR BOILING WORT! ESPECIALLY WHEN YOU ADD THE HOPS! THE WORT BEGINS TO BUBBLE UP RATHER FURIOUSLY! For that reason I recommend removing the wort from the heat as you add stuff, then putting it back on the fire once you have finished.)
The Malt is a very thick syrup so after you poor it in, add a little bit of hot water (from the tap) to the malt container and slosh it around to try and get ALL of the malty goodness out of the can/jug and into your wort! This will also add a little more volume to your wort so you need to keep that in mind when you start with your initial volume of wort.

Next water tip. Most recipe call for you to poor your finished wort into the fermentation bucket and then add sterile water to bring the volume up to 5 gallons. Then you have to wait for the temperature of your wort to come down to like 90 degrees before you can add your yeast. You will KILL your yeast if it goes into too hot a wort. So you wait. and wait and wait and wait.
NOT ME!
Some time before Brew day, we fill sanitized Tupperware containers with previously boiled water and make sterile blocks of ice! So when the wort is finished its boil, the first thing we put in the fermentation bucket is a several blocks of ice (about a gallon or so ... your mileage may very). Then you poor your boiling hot wort over that and stir. The ice melts in about 5 minutes and you got cooled wort, ready for the addition of yeast! You will still probably need to add a little water so if you got it too cold you can add a bit of warm water. I know some directions say NO ICE but we have done this for years and our beer taste GREAT if I do say so myself!

Another thing ... your finished wort will have a lot of sedimentary material in it (the hops). If you leave this in your fermentation bucket, when fermentation starts to get really going and foams up, this stuff can clog up your airlock. The result is that it can blow out the air lock. This might allow bacteria into your beer (which would ruin it) and also make a localized mess in what ever closet your bucket was sitting in.  The way we have avoided this was to strain our wort as we poured it over the ice. My buddy has this very fine, mesh bag (nylon I think) that we pour the wort through. Works like a charm but it takes one guy to poor while the other makes sure the bag doesn't get pulled into the bucket.
It is not only more fun to brew with a buddy ... it's also quite helpful!

Finally - just a bit on sanitation/sterilization/cleanliness. Most everyone places a REAL high premium on this. We've all seen what happens if you brew a mug of tea and then forget and let it sit out for a few days. Well this is like brewing tea ... but your going to let it sit out for a month! So yes, try to keep everything clean and contaminant free. HOWEVER ... keep in mind that in Inn keepers who couldn't read and rarely bathed, brewed up large batches of this stuff in open buckets in the cellars of their taverns. Sawdust and who knows what else fell through the cracks of the floors down into the stuff and yet ... they still ended up with beer!
If 14th century plague victims could brew beer, you probably don't have to worry too much about trying to maintain sterile, laboratory conditions!

... but WHY?

As I was exercising this morning my mind was wondering on the topic of natural disasters and the question of "Why, if there was a God, would he allow these things to happen. "

I should start by saying I would never presume to know what God is thinking or had in mind at any given moment. It's my opinion that anyone who tells you they can, are probably trying to sell you something.

What I can share is my observations on the ground after another disaster, Hurricane Katrina.

I made several trips to the Mississippi Gulf Coast after that storm. The first, just days after. The scope of that sort of thing can bring on shock to even someone who didn't live there. The loss of property and life that I witnessed didn't cause me to question my faith but it absolutely left me thinking "Why? What could God have possibly been thinking here?"

After a few days though, I began to see a bigger picture taking place.
One day I found myself standing in a food line. I and a 100 others would get a lunch that day because of some people that had driven from Texas and set up a "chuck wagon" in a church parking lot. These people were volunteers. This trip actually cost them money and they would be sleeping on a sleeping bag on someone's floor that night.

 I got to talking with those around me in line. I was standing between a doctor and a convenience store clerk with his family. Their homes had all been destroyed. At that moment, (and for days before and a few after) we were all socio-economically equals. The doctor might have had $100 in his wallet and lots of credit cards but there was no place within a 30 minute drive to buy anything.
At that moment, everyone's net worth was what they could do to help others.
... and they were helping others.

Armies of people (at there own expense) remembered their humanity and descended on that area to help complete strangers. One day my group was helping an elderly couple to remove their destroyed possessions from their home. Word came to us that a neighbor needed help clearing some downed trees from their yard so they could reach the back of their house.

4 of us grabbed chainsaws (we had brought a trailer with every possible tool we thought we might need), went down the street and spent the next 3 hours in 98 degree heat and near 100% humidity cutting pine trees and hauling them out of the way. When we had finished, the homeowner came outside (she had been in her home ripping out moldering drywall) with her checkbook and ask how much she owed us. Baffled, we told her we were just there to help. She shook her head and ask what tree service we were with. When we each told her what we did for a living (we all were white collar professionals who had only just met that week) she got this far-a-way look and said in a deadpan "This is what Christians are."

It was clearly a "moment" for her but the real lesson there was for us because (IMHO) that is what Christians are supposed to be. Not out picketing to make someone's life miserable. Not trying to force others to follow your beliefs through legislation and politics. We're supposed to help each other. Actually physically help.
I was told later by a member of the church we had taken over as a base of operations and were living in, that the presence of all of these volunteers had changed that congregation. It was a very affluent congregation whose members had always been very ready to whip out their checkbooks when a "need" was brought to their attention … but the idea of putting your whole life on hold to just go and do for others in need (more then half the church members had their homes destroyed or flooded) had become foreign to them. Now, they got it. Being a "Christian" wasn't like joining a country club. It was a call to service.

The following spring, 10s of thousands of teens/early 20's traveled to the Gulf Coast on spring break. For the first time in decades, they were there not to immerse themselves in selfish hedonism but to selflessly help strangers.

I go back to my first point.
I have absolutely no idea why God would allow such destruction to rain down on folks. I can say that one of the results from Katrina was 10's of thousands (if not 100's of thousands) of people waking up and realizing the importance of not living just for yourself. It was also a wake up call to Christians who had fallen asleep at the wheel. Who had gotten comfortable and complacent and were willing to overlook a the people around them who could use a little help. Hurricane Katrina made it impossible to overlook the need.

I suspect these devastating fires will have that same effect in those communities. In the coming days and weeks there is going to be a need for a small army of people who realize we're all in this together. It will cause people to come outside the safety and complacency of their own 4 walls to help those who have lost theirs. Caring for what happens to neighbors and strangers NOT because some agency paid them to do so but because they share the same biology, joys and pain.

If it is all a just a lesson it's a pretty harsh on. Generally speaking though, we humans are a pretty stubborn and self absorbed lot. We get really good at ignoring the advice that would spare us from pain in the first place and then repeating the mistakes and folly we could have learned from the easier life lessons.
Some of the most important lessons I learned as a kid were only learned through pain and loss. I suppose that doesn't change just because we grow older.

Some times it just doesn't work out.

So often when you hear of the untimely death of a child it involves drugs or gangs. In this case it was just really poor decision making involving girls.

This nephew was one of the sweetest kids you'd meet. A clever, sci-fi loving, shoe gazer who played in the marching band in high school, was super intelligent (made great grades) and had the really funny sense of humor, that is when he decided to speak up. His parents had divorced when he was maybe 6 and that probably had something to do with shy insecurity that left him to loose himself in what ever girl was giving him attention.

He barely left his home town after High School because he had a steady older girl friend. In the end, pressure from his mom to accept a scholarship he had been given, forced him to cut the girlfriend cord. He went a 2 days drive away from home and was studying to be a fire, forensic scientist.
There he met a girl.

The summer after that first year at school, he chose to follow the new girl friend back to her home town and get a summer job.
She then decided not to go back to the University but to enroll in the local community college ... so he did as well.
Then she broke up with him.

So now he was 20 and with out the financial assistance of the previous Universities scholarship he had to take a job to pay for his apartment and schooling. Which meant he wasn't in school full time anymore.

Then he met another girl. Only this one proved to be his final undoing.
He met her with a group of college kids. I never met her but apparently she was quite attractive and all over him. Unfortunately, when your 20 and at a party you don't tend to card anyone who comes up and starts talking to you. Especially when you are a shy, geeky guy with a need to cling and the girl is clearly hot for you. Apparently you should.

I really don't know how long they dated. Maybe 2 or 3 months before her parents found out and confronted him with the news she was 15.
Did he ever really wonder about why she didn't want to him to meet her parents? I don't know. She told him stories about them being abusive though in hind site one has to think there should have been other signs that things weren't quite right.
He was a smart kid but he was also a 20 year old guy with a girl who wanted him.

Pretty clearly, if he did have suspicions he let the wrong head do the thinking.
So when the parents found out they threatened to have him arrested but having had a history of trouble with their daughter, they told him that if he left the county they wouldn't press charges. So he did.

Then a few weeks later she called him up late one stormy night. She was hysterical and said she had had a big fight with her parents and they had thrown her out of the house. She was calling from a pay-phone at a convenience store and had no money and didn't know who else to call. So, being the sweet, stupid kid he was - he drove 1 and a half hours through the rain and picked her up.
It was now the middle of the night so he decided to take her to a local motel room.
(Is anyone else screaming "Noooooooooo" at this point?)

What he didn't know was that the girl HAD in fact run away. She had gone to a local theater early in the evening and when her parents came to pick her up, no one could find her. After my nephew had left town, she had apparently continued to fight with her parents about seeing him ... so the parents naturally assumed that the two had run off together ... and they called the police.

Cut to the next morning. Some how the parents had gotten hold of the phone number for my nephew's dad (whom he was now living with) and explained that they were looking for her and had a warrant out for the son's arrest.

The dad then called my nephew's cell phone and explained the predicament. He suggested that my nephew go by the police station, drop the girl on the steps and get out of town. That wasn't my nephew though. That seemed cruel to him so he took the girl to the police station and walked her inside. Somehow he thought when he explained what had happened it would clear everything up. He was promptly arrested.

When the parents arrived and heard his side of the story, they didn't question it for a moment. They knew their daughter too well. So they dropped all charges.
Unfortunately, my nephew had just turned 21 and the D.A. decided they were going to make an example of him. When he couldn't pressure the parents into pressing charges ... the D.A. went ahead and pressed charges on behalf of the state, charging him with 6 counts of Statutory rape and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor.
Perhaps the first brake he got was that the judge was able to take a rational look at the situation and gave him the very minimum sentence possible, a few months and then probation.

That was a year and a half ago.

Of course, he had his picture posted in the paper next to the headline "MAN charged with statutory rape of local teen". The story itself of course gave no back story to indicate this wasn't some perp hiding in the bushes and assaulting little kids. Not that anyone cares what is said after the headlines. All of the corresponding, self-rightous blog-commentors couldn't wait to jump in with their outrage, not knowing him or ANYTHING about the actual situation, they piled on with posts saying horrible things about this "SEXUAL PREDATOR" and "people like him".
My nephew's younger sister was a freshman in High school at the time and it was no time at all until she found those posts. She was so traumatized at how so many complete strangers could be so vicious towards someone she personally knew to be a good person, she had a break down and had to have counseling.

He also gots to carry the "sexual offender" label with him anywhere he lived and has to list his "criminal offenses" on any application he fills out. It seems no one ever wants to know the details about those sort of things, they just see the label and grab their pitchforks.

His dad got him a manual labor sort of job that allowed him to get an apartment . No longer in school and with a job instead of a career.

At some point along here he was diagnosed with depression and put on medication.

About Christmas time he got very ill. Flu then Strep Throat and bronchitis. For a month he was terribly ill.
So last Monday night he just gave up hope. He took all his anti-depresants and a full bottle of Tylenol. Sometime in the middle of the night he had a change of heart and called his dad for help ... but he didn't tell him what he had done. So when his dad picked him up he just thought he was still sick and took him home. It wasn't till 9am the next morning, when he found my nephew bleeding from the mouth on the bathroom floor that he realized the extent of the problem.

By then his liver was pretty much gone. He however, took another 2 days to fade away.

I just look at this and shake my head. My nephew wasn't a creep, a bully, a predator, or a druggie. He didn't hang with gangs or criminals. He really didn't do anything most of the rest of us didn't do as teens/early twenties. The rest of us though were lucky enough to never have to be accountable for our bad judgement.

He simply wasn't a bad guy.
He was just a stupid, sweet, insecure geek with an over active need to be in a relationship. For him though, life just didn't work out.

Egypt. Déjà vu ?

For those who may not be old enough to know that ... there was a time when Iran was NOT an Islamic fundamentalist state.

Iran was an Authoritarian Regime in the middle-East whose ruler (The Shaw) was kept in power by the U.S. It was a place of great wealth but that wealth was held in the hands of the very very few. Most of it's people lived in poverty. Though the Shaw ruled with ruthlessness, the U.S. supported him because he was VERY friendly to the west and policy experts saw him as a stabilizing force in the middle east who was actively trying to modernize his country.

In 1976, President Jimmy Carter put Human Rights foremost on the U.S. agenda and began pressuring the Shaw to improve his Human Rights record. Buoyed by this, Iranian students began demonstrating against the Shaw, demanding freedoms and even Democracy. Many of these initial demonstrations were met with violence and the shootings of hundreds if not thousands of protesters. This however, only incited more students to rise up and then be joined by more of the general populace. Eventually there were country wide work stop-ages. Many outsiders cheered the brave Iranians and their fight for freedom and democracy.

In the end the Shaw fled the country.

Happy ending?
No. Not really.

It turns out that radical fundamentalist Islamists were not only waiting in the wings to take control, they had actually infiltrated the students and had been orchestrating many of the marches and protests.

These savvy militants knew that there were not nearly enough of them to overthrow the government AND they would never have the popular support of the people. 10's of thousands of emboldened, passionate students though, represented an army just waiting to be used to achieve their own goals. The protesters became the unwitting pawns doing the work for a greater evil.

The Shaw was thrown out, the fundamentalists moved in. They went from Authoritarian to Totalitarian. 30 years later the people of Iran have far less freedoms then under the Shaw and Iran is now a Destabilizing force for the entire world.

So now we have Egypt.
An Authoritarian Regime in the middle-East whom the U.S. helps to keep in power. It was a place of great wealth but that wealth was held in the hands of the very very few. Most lived in poverty. Though their "president" of 30 years rules with an iron fist, the U.S. supported him because he is VERY friendly to the west and policy experts see him as a stabilizing force in the middle east who was actively trying to suppress the spread of radical Islam. In fact Egypt's president is known to have zero tolerance for Islamists in politics, whether they are militants or moderates.

Protests that started with well intentioned students wanting freedoms and economic opportunity have now spread to the populace. So far, they cry out not for true elections or for another leader to be put in place but simply for the current ruler to be thrown out. A power vacuum.

Whose waiting to rush in and fill that void?
Currently, Egypt's largest opposition movement is the outlawed "Muslim Brotherhood".
Its support base comes in large part from its elaborate network of social, medical and education services. It made a surprisingly strong showing in parliamentary elections in 2005, winning 20 percent of the legislature's seats, but it failed to win a single seat in elections held late last year. Those elections were widely thought to have been rigged in favor of the president's ruling party.

The leader of the Muslim Brotherhood has said that freedom from the current President would enable them to push effectively for more proper Islamic education and training, so Egyptians would be able to "stand up to the American-Zionist project."

So be careful Egypt. Work for human rights and democracy ... but before you throw out your government, have a plan.
Look to Iran. History has a nasty habit of repeating itself.

Obama - Economically? All the right moves.

As someone who spends way to much time studying the stock market and following the financial world I can say that, Economically speaking - This President has so far made all the right moves.

His first daunting task was to stop the U.S. economic freefall.
We were sliding toward the edge of a bottomless pit and picking up speed. The course of action he chose stopped that fall and now things are improving. If you have any real idea of just how grim things were, stopping the decline and loss of jobs would be enough in itself. What is more amazing though, is that he managed to do this while enduring some of the most contentious political conditions of any President.
President Obama has managed to navigate Washington politics while being one of the most productive Presidents in history, taking care of many of the little, unglamorous, "housekeeping" items that have been ignored by past White Houses and building up for decades on the national "to do" list.

He has gotten laws passed to reform the predatory credit card industry ... laws that congress has been simply passing the buck on for over 25 years!
He is the ONLY President to finally get a Health Care reform law passed. Now it is up to congress to make it the best bill it can possibly be. Will they work for America and make it better? Or will they just play politics and try to repeal millions of Americans' Health Care and cost us ANOTHER 350 billion dollars?
While both sides of the isle were too busy playing politics to effectively govern, this President has made unpopular compromises to keep things moving forward. After years of "out of touch millionaires", playboys, and idiot cowboys ... it's nice to finally have an intelligent adult in the Whitehouse.

Economically speaking though ... try to imagine the horror of where we would be without this President's leadership.
Even with the Republican's publically sworn effort to block EVERY bit of recovery and economic stimulus effort that the President tried to bring to the American people, even with the Republican's vowing to try and "shut down" the government this last year while our economy hung at the very brink ... this President has managed to stabilize the economy (keeping us from sliding into a "double dip recession") and engineered a recovery.

For the last two years though, the Republican machine has tried it's best to make the public believe(with some success) that there is some secret button somewhere that someone could press to put the economy right back where it was before the Great Bush Recession. However, all of the thinking, rational adults in the room(an ever decreasing number) realize that even under the BEST of circumstances (not where we are) undoing an economic crash is a long slow process.
You just don't expect the cancer ridden, crash victim to leap up out of bed and start dancing the highland fling simply because they no longer need life support.

This might also be the time to point out that the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the S&P 500, and the Nasdaq Composite are all at multi-year highs, lifted by a bullish outlook for financials and the recent Federal Reserve's beige book report showed that the economy was growing at a moderate pace, with some areas such as consumer spending and manufacturing showing actual signs of STRENGTH. That's "growth" that was occurring while the Republicans have been crying that the sky was falling.

As for unemployment, it is a huge entity that behaves not unlike a mile long freight train. It takes it a long long time to get up to speed and once moving it is very difficult to stop. Dubya Bush had been accelerating unemployment for 4 years and with it still accelerating he handed the controls to President Obama. Obama has managed to stop that train in less then two years and has begun to get some movement in the right direction. Who ever our next President will be, they will be reaping the rewards of this Presidents efforts with the economy as all signs indicate it will have steady forward momentum by 2012.

All in all, it really is quite amazing that with the Republican's putting forth their full effort to sabotage the recovery and the Democrats inability to form a cohesive, focused direction on ... well, anything - that this President has STILL managed to steer us out of the rocks and has us headed back to recovery.
Spectacular really.

Good behavior doesn't sell ad space

My Pastor gave a wonderful sermon last Sunday ... I only wish it was getting as much publicity as the guy who is threatening to burn the Koran.

In reference to the debate on the "controversial" community center in NYC - he said the following (and I am paraphrasing here)-

1) When discussing this topic, as Christians, he would remind us (remember, I'm paraphrasing) DON'T BE A DOUCHE!
He then recited biblical quotes from Jesus, where he directed his followers (Christians) to be humble and polite and respectful and NOT to be prideful, boastful, ARROGANT and basically "Holier-than-thou"! The idea is to make people interested in his teachings and NOT to turn them away by being asshats.

2) DON'T PREJUDGE. If you wanted to see horrific acts carried out by people claiming to be doing them for their religion, Christians have certainly done quite a few of these throughout history. The Pastor went on to say he personally knew many Muslims and they are wonderful human beings just like you or me. They work hard and just want a good life for their families and themselves.
When we are prejudice against people we have NEVER met ... we are following the will of something but it ain't Jesus.

3) Christian's should always be looking for the truth.
We are now surrounded by people whose full time job it is, to deceive us for political and financial gain. The spend all day writing internet posts and news articles with deliberate misinformation and spiteful rhetoric, all designed to make us fear, hate and strike out against people we have never met. THAT, is a good definition of evil.
Christians shouldn't react to stories that make them mad but should instead try to spend some time looking for what the truth behind that story is.
++++++
IMHO, I believe that the above is who Christian really are.
Problem is that "faith" is a personal experience and when it comes to personal feelings and beliefs - "one size does not fit all".

just sayin'